Thursday, August 27, 2009

I'm sure a lot of my more hardcore readers already know who GG Allin is, and are probably making fun of me right now for being such a square. My good friend Jess is the one who first made mention of him to me, and she is punk as f-word. In fact, the last time I saw her, she broke a Jack Daniels bottle over my head. I accept your unique way of showing affection, Jess, but did you have to use a full one? That's just wasteful.

So where was I? Uh... oh yes. GG Allin. I'm just going to quote from the article, because I don't even know how to embellish on this.

- "GG was born as Jesus Christ Allin at Weeks Memorial Hospital in Lancaster, New Hampshire. He was given this messianic name because his father, Merle Colby Allin, Sr., told his young wife, Arleta Gunther, that Jesus Christ himself had visited him and told him that his newborn son would be a great and all powerful man in the vein of the Messiah."

- "During the early to mid 1980s, Allin fronted many acts. These included early albums varying from The Cedar Street Sluts to The Scumfucs in 1982, and The Texas Nazis in 1985."

- "...Allin also began eating laxatives before performances - as defecation was becoming a regular stage act."

- "He wrote and visited John Wayne Gacy in prison a number of times and Gacy painted a portrait of Allin, which became the album cover to the soundtrack of the film, Hated: GG Allin And The Murder Junkies."

- "By this point, Allin's performances, which often resulted in considerable damage to venues and sound equipment, were regularly stopped after only a few songs by police or venue owners. Allin was charged with assault and battery or indecent exposure a number of times. His constant touring was only stopped by jail time or by long hospital stays for broken bones, blood poisoning, and other physical trauma."

- "At his funeral, Allin's bloated, discolored corpse was dressed in his black leather jacket and trademark jock strap. He had a bottle of Jim Beam beside him in his casket, per his wishes (openly stated in his self-penned acoustic country ballad, "When I Die"). As part of his brother's request, the mortician was instructed not to wash the corpse (which smelled strongly of feces), or apply any makeup. The funeral became a wild party. Friends posed with the corpse, placing drugs and whiskey into its mouth. As the funeral ended, his brother put a pair of headphones on Allin. The headphones were plugged into a portable cassette player, in which was loaded a copy of The Suicide Sessions. The video of his funeral is widely available for purchase, and is an extra feature on the Hated DVD and some bootleg VHS tapes. His grave is regularly vandalized with feces and alcohol by fans."

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Yes folks, I'm back. Thanks for the kind birthday wishes! Maybe it's grim death for a young upstart blogger such as myself to take a hiatus, but... damn, I needed one. But I'm back, and as adequate as ever! Yeah!

To celebrate TILfW's resurrection, I thought I'd talk about the Association of the Dead. In a region of northern India called Uttar Pradesh, corrupt officials can be bribed to falsely declare someone dead. Sounds like a capital joke to play on one's chum, to be sure, but unfortunately it's used to do things like, oh, gain ownership of someone's land when they don't want to sell it. Luckily for the walking dead, this association is willing to go to bat for them, because according to the article, "the process to undo this is long, arduous, as well as often hopelessly inefficient and corrupt — not to mention that those least able to fight back make excellent victims." And considering the founder of the organization was "dead" for almost 20 years, this does seem like the kind of thing you'd need some backup for. And you thought the DMV was bad! Wakka wakka.